Asake Has Become an Auteur of Opulence

The video for Asake’s latest single BADMAN GANGSTER opens with a close up of his face. He dons an afro with a crisp lineup. On his face is a phalanx of tattoos which are barely visible on his dark skin. Diamond accessories adorn his neck and ears. His eyes are buried behind dark shades. The camera slowly zooms out to reveal more of his frame. As he jogs down a pavement, the lithe diamond chains that adorn his neck bounce in concert. Two burly security personnel wearing black suits flank him on either side. The scene evokes a frequent gimmick of Ashton Hall’s, whose kafakaesque morning routines have attained surreal internet notoriety. 

Hall’s schtick is exaggerated satire. His clips, which have become something of an internet staple, often find him performing a litany of bizarre rituals. Dunking his face in a bowl of ice-cold water is a recurrent motif in his content. Bizarre acts like pausing in the middle of a game of tennis to eat a watermelon or slathering his face with fruits at incongruous moments are also recurring themes. Another motif he seems to enjoy is jogging with security flanking him on either side. Sometimes he turbocharges the scene by introducing luxurious vehicles which trail him on his run. 

It’s this display of opulence, of grandeur, that Asake seeks to evoke with the video. But where Hall seeks to satirize opulence, Asake trains his focus on depicting a true-to-life version of a glamorous lifestyle. Across the video, we see him savoring a lifestyle fit for royalty. In one scene, he’s working out on a sleek boat. Though the video is monochrome, as he lifts the dumbbell to his chest, the ocean around him sparkles with a pristine sheen. 

The video unspools with the austere tenor of a documentary film. The use of black and white adds to this effect. In one scene he and Rema are seated at the Jacquemus SS26 Show during the last Paris Fashion Week. As the models saunter down the runway, they observe with clinical intensity, tracing their eyes to follow their movements. After the show they exchange a handshake and wrap themselves in a hug. Pressed against each other, Asake’s all-white outfit and Rema’s all-black ensemble seem to crackle with a mystical energy. This scene is crucial because it strengthens the biographical beats of the video—this is a vicarious window into my life, it seems to say. 

That Asake posted the entire video on social media, moments before the song appeared on streaming platforms, was no accident. Tracing back to the days of his first album, he has always displayed a keen awareness of the power of visual storytelling to shape perceptions in a way that surpasses aural content. In his MMWTV era he adopted, as his uniform, the pairing of ridiculously large pants and tight shirts. Occasionally he’d complete the look with chunky Balenciaga trainers and futuristic shades. His sartorial aesthetic split opinions down the middle. To some, he was a fashion iconoclast, unparalleled in his dedication to pushing the boundaries out of mainstream fashion in these parts. Others simply found his style to be in poor taste. Either way, he stirred fiery conversations and cemented himself as a cultural powerhouse. 

His videos affected a similarly jaunty albeit polarizing tone. His videos in that era—most of which were produced by T.G Omori— frequently featured roving crowds which seem to be a visual manifestation of the crowd vocals he deployed in his music. The videos elicited reactions from the entire spectrum, ranging from effusive exultation to derision. 

By posting the entire video for BADMAN GANGSTER on social media—a move whose simplicity belies its forcefulness—Asake managed to shape the narrative around the single from the onset.  Within moments of its posting, the internet has christened the song as “Big Boy Music,” alluding to its overtones of opulence. Since exiting YBNL in February this year, his reputation has taken a hit. Former partners have fired a salvo of unsavory allegations against him. His case has also not been helped by his fashion choices. He has played around with a military aesthetic, covered himself in tattoos, and took to wearing distressed—torn—clothes. All of these fed the narrative that he was adrift, or worse, drug addled, recalling the squalid twilight years of Majek Fashek. 

This narrative has slowly dissipated in the past few months. But with this video, he seems to have smothered all doubts about his wellbeing. Interestingly, the video arrived days before the announcement of a distribution deal with Larry Jackson’s Gamma, seemingly prefiguring a new era. Days after the video’s release, Asake followed with yet another video to the song. Here he leans slightly away from the literal and towards the figurative. Bathered in Chiaroscuro lighting and surrounded by naked hellenic-looking women, ornate tapestries and large renaissance paintings, he looks to be living in a sensate Rembrandt painting. His message is clear: if in his sophomore album he alluded to being a work of art, his current phase is a holistic embrace of that ethos.